Wind turbine blades that once stood over Minnesota cornfields are now being processed into fuel for cement kilns, an unglamorous but concrete example of the practical, less-publicized side of the clean energy transition. According to Xcel Energy's 2022 Sustainability Report, two of the utility's wind-farm "repowering" projects removed 603 old turbine blades in 2022 in Minnesota, for a total of approximately 4,188 tons of blades, which were then shredded and used as alternative fuel in cement kilns.
Why wind blades are a recycling problem
Wind energy is often presented as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, and in many respects it is. However, the industry's dirty little secret: turbine blades are huge, almost unrecyclable, fiberglass-resin behemoths that can sometimes stretch several lengths of a football field. Over the years, they’ve been cut into chunks and sent to landfills.
